Sunrise Doesn't Last All Morning
by Ebony Kain
Summary: However much you train, whatever tricks you have, there are some battles that cannot be won.


**Title**: "Sunrise Doesn't Last All Morning…"

**Author**: Ebony Kain

**Pairing**: Neji x Lee x Hinata

**Disclaimer**: All named characters belong to Masashi Kishimoto. I make no money off this. I just wrote it because Neji is pushy and the Rent soundtrack is full of angst.

**Warnings**: Character death

**Summary**: However much you train, whatever tricks you have, there are some battles that cannot be won.

_**Originally written early March 2006

* * *

**_

Neji doesn't look into mirrors anymore. If he can help it. At the start, he'd stare at it for hours. He could see it spreading, eating away at his chakra… along with everything else.

They'd gotten to the point where their sparring was more of a dance: Neither one able to land a solid blow on the other. But when Lee lands a fist solidly to Neji's stomach, Lee is surprised at the total lack of victory he feels. Neji won't accept the offer of help to stand, struggling more than he should to gain his footing. Though he demands the continuation of their match, he knows the fine tremors shaking him are only getting worse.

He hears Hinata's soft gasp when her white-eyed gaze falls on him. Finds himself grabbing her arm and roughly pulling her into the empty hallway. "Don't," he demands, because he could never bring himself to plead. She hesitates. He watches her debate with herself: To argue, to accede, or to lie. His fingers tighten on her wrist and he has to force himself to relax the grip. Her face crumples in on itself and she nods.

It's raining—and he aches. He's nineteen and feels the changes in the weather deep in his bones the way old, old men complain of. He stifles his cough and pointedly ignores both Lee's concerned frown and Gai-sensei's well-meaning advice for combating the common cold. Later in the day, though, he accepts a mug of steaming tea from Tenten—ginger and garlic.

Neji rests in bed on his side and finds himself staring at the mirror behind him. At the node near his hip that no longer glows with his chakra. He turns his focus to the next node up the line of his lymphatic system. If he stares long enough, he can watch it grow dimmer.

Despite the understanding they came to, Neji knows his uncle will never care to look close enough at him to know what Hinata has seen. Neji doesn't know if he should feel grateful, or resentful that Hiashi is oblivious to the fight he is losing.

Teams Gai and Kakashi sit witness to the latest challenge between their title members. When Naruto makes a disparaging comment about Gai's eyebrows, and Lee does not immediately rise to his defence, Neji finds his own voice filling that void: "If masculinity can be measured by the amount of hair in other places on the human body, then why not his eyebrows. It's all just hair." He excuses himself in the silence that follows, though can't quite bring himself to regret speaking up.

He had known it for a lie even before Hinata did. And it's Lee she brings to his side when he finds he cannot raise his body from where it's fallen. And even though he knew… even still, he finds himself suddenly furious—face livid as the blood rushes away to his limbs in a fight-or-flight response he is incapable of acting upon. He shouts at them, voice shrilly unrecognisable to his own ears, struggles against the gentle hands trying to help him, flinging his hurt at them as if this could somehow ease the pain in his body and pride. Neji is abruptly silenced as his face is pressed to a warm chest, and all he can see with his normal sight is green. A hand cradling his head, another holding his clenched fist over a rapidly beating heart. There's an arm curled around his side, another hand holding his, their fingers laced. A body before him, a body behind—pressed between two people he never wanted to believe were precious to him.

* * *

In a village of ninja, where lives may be lost or saved because of information, secrets are hard to keep. There is a saying: "The way to keep a secret between two people, is if one of them is dead." Ninja—masters of secrets—know other ways.

Tsunade, Godaime Hokage, is surprised to see that she has not been double-booked, but that Hyuuga Hinata and Rock Lee have come together, to request leave _together_. After granting, more eagerly than perhaps she should have, she questions Sakura, whom she had believed to be the object of Lee's affections. From there it is ridiculously simple to turn all eyes of the village to them.

Neji sits in bemused silence beside an enthralled Tenten as they learn of the "budding romance" between Lee and Hinata from Gai-sensei.

Hiashi pulls Neji aside to ask if he knew about those two. He notices his uncle seems unhappy with the prospect. He swallows his smile when he responds, "You'll never meet a man with more loyalty that Rock Lee." He watches, after he's turned and walked away—Hiashi doesn't look happier in the least. Neji feels a smile stretch his mouth for the first time in months.

Neji is as surprised as Tenten and their sensei to learn that he will be acting as Hinata's escort on her vacation. He notices Lee is _not_ surprised, nor putout by the fact Neji will be with them. Neji would have said, had he been asked, that there was not a deceptive bone in Lee's entire body… but now he wonders.

Gai-sensei has come to speak with Hiashi. Neji and Hinata can hear him through the walls. And while his arguments that his team is being cut in half and won't be able to take on their usual calibre of missions are quite valid, Hiashi remains unmoved: "Your student will not be alone and unguarded with my daughter." The ensuing shouting has Hinata blushing as the integrity of her virtue is defended versus the defence that Lee would never compromise a maiden's virtue before marrying her. It is the concept of marriage that has Hinata hiding her face against a grinning Neji's shoulder. At this rate, the village would be talking about the impending wedding by the morning.

* * *

Just before they leave, the Hokage's eyes are especially sharp as they hand in their paperwork. Tsunade pulls Neji aside, a hand on his shoulder. He knows she knows. Her eyes flicker to Hinata and Lee. He nods. Her chakra flows through him briefly. He watches her eyes—No, it would not have made a difference had he gone to her when he first noticed. He cannot ask the question, "How long?" He knows she doesn't have the answer anyway.

* * *

He's shuddering—shivering, but his sheets are soaked through with his sweat. His chattering teeth wake Lee, who rips away the covers, ignoring Neji's nakedness as he calls for Hinata through the door dividing their rooms at the inn. She doesn't have time for embarrassment as she follows Lee's directions to get the bath running warm, but not hot. She doesn't even think about it as she gets into the bath herself, steadying Neji as Lee hands him down to her. She realises she can feel his ribs, her splayed fingers fitting automatically between each.

After the fear none of them will admit to has passed, and the shaking is over, they lean against each other in an exhausted slump. As they lightly debate the necessity of getting out of the tub and drying off for a second attempt at sleep, Neji's nearly silent laughter makes the other two pause. "Hiashi-sama… may have been right to worry… perhaps…" And then they are all acutely aware of how Hinata's yukata had been white, and now is transparent.

At the next inn they pay for two rooms but use only one. At their destination ryokan and onsen, they don't even bother with the pretext of two rooms. They feel just far enough from Konohagakure that word should not pass back to those ever-eager ears. Instead, they sleep huddled together beneath a single blanket. Neji had not known he missed such simple touch as holding and being held since his father chose the manner of his death. He's suddenly glad that Lee and Hinata are both here, learning this touch together with him. He closes his eyes and refuses to acknowledge that there is a mirror in their room.

Hinata watches the lights go out. Lee has convinced Neji that even ninja in top form, such as Gai-sensei, need help scrubbing their back. And Hinata watches them through steam lit up like fairy lights by torches arranged about the edges of the spring. The torches, in their protective glass, don't flicker in the wind the way Neji's chakra paths and nodes glow brighter and dimmer from day to day, moment to moment. She doesn't want to cry as another node flits out and dies near his left ear. She knows he won't appreciate it. There will be plenty of time left to cry… later…

Lee feels Neji breathing. He can't help the feeling that each breath that lifts his arm, resting across the other boy to let his hand hold tight against Hinata's, is a gift. Burying his face in long hair still slightly damn from mineral-rich water, Lee adds to the dampness while feeling that he is stealing little grains of sand and adding them to the top half of a cracking hourglass. In the half-life of a waking dream Lee wonders if it would be a good thing or bad to pinch the hourglass closed. If a person's time is stopped…

* * *

It's never even an issue in their minds—who made the first move. It would be like asking when, exactly, a person's hair had gotten so long. The progression was so naturally gradual that, to those involved, nothing seemed to have changed. Kisses exchanged as easily as a "hello."

* * *

They've become the darlings of the ryokan by the end of the first week: The polyamorous ninja trio. None of the other guests have approached the ninja, though they speculate and come up with ever more fantastic and romantic stories about them. It is because of this unsubtle, yet gentle attention that, when Lee publicly insists they celebrate Neji's birthday, an ukiyo-e artist gathers his courage to announce himself to the young Konoha Ninja.

It takes a Bad Day, with Neji struggling just to breathe on his own, to compel the recalcitrant jounin to agree to the painting. He's still pale, when the artist has them sit under a wisteria in summer-bloom. He is supported between the bodies of Hinata and Lee, practically fading into his yukata. Hinata's soft smile causes both her companions to smile in turn as the painter's assistant shakes a shower of purple and white petals down on them.

* * *

Neji's chest burns. The pneumonia settled into his lungs last night, taking advantage of his nearly non-existent immune system. The coughing fits suck more and more strength from him each time. He wonders how long is left. And he wonders, as Hinata lays a damp cloth across his fevered brow, why ninja always seem to form groups of three. Is it so that if one falls there will still be someone to share the grief with? He thinks of Naruto and Sakura at the gate of the village as they prepared to go after Sasuke. Thinks about the tears the pink-haired kunoichi shed for the comrade she knew, deep down, wouldn't be coming back. He wonders if Tenten or Hinata will cry for him.

Neji looks up as Lee enters with the village's doctor in tow. Before the man can even settle down to begin treating Neji's symptoms, because there is nothing else to be done but ease some of the pain and discomfort, the white-eyed jounin rasps out, "I want to go home." While the doctor raises his voice in protest of the three-day journey, Hinata and Lee are already packing their belongings and counting out the money they owe the okami-san for their stay. Neji puts a shaking hand on the doctor's wrist, "This is one Fate that no one can escape. I'd rather meet it on my own ground, than run from it like a coward."

The doctor has loaded down Hinata's pack with medicines and tonics to ease Neji's coughing and shore up his strength. He hopes it will be enough to get them home. Though ninja, he can't help but see them as children, about the same age as his own daughter. He runs to beg the ukiyo-e artist to go with them. The excuse of painting them and maybe their village enough that maybe they'd allow it. And he find himself one step behind the intuitive painter, who is already in the middle of negotiating a price for the protection of the three ninja on his way to meet and paint the portrait of the beautiful Hokage. Perhaps the pale ninja would be able to ride within the carriage with the artist, and be safe.

* * *

.

* * *

The kunoichi Kwannon said, "I shall die as I have lived: With the wind at my back, and the blood on my hands."

In the end, Neji never set eyes on his Village again. Mercenaries had been hired to find and kill the painter, for daring to paint the nude body of a Kaze no Hime. There were three ninja to defend him, as _they_ had been hired to do. Lee fought like the green beast he longed to be, hoping to take out as many as the enemy as quickly as he could. Hinata, with her Byakugan activated, saw it when Neji's heart gave up the battle even before the jounin himself did. A ninja to the end, Neji killed two of the enemy after the damned Seal took away his sight.

There was nothing they could have done to change the outcome. Hinata wondered, as she walked through the rain beside the carriage, if this pressing weight was what Neji felt all those years, struggling under the yolk of the fate the Main Family places on all the Branches of the Hyuuga tree. Lee cried, and never once pretended the wetness on his cheeks were anything but tears. The artist's caravan became a funeral procession into Konohagakure.

Officially, one Hyuuga Neji died in the line of duty. As the last page of his file is added to the records of the Village, there is no mention in those pages of any illness. He died on a mission, as so many ninja do. Just one more name in a book. One more etching in the rock of the cenotaph.

Many people will stare at that memorial. Eyes will slide over his name, seeing it but not, searching out those names of those they knew. Others will linger, and the simple sight of that name will bring memories of a comrade… a friend… a lover… a student… And those who stand before it, lost in the salty haze of yesterdays, will wonder, as all those left behind do, what could have been different. What could have been said or done at any number of occasions that would have let him know that he was appreciated, or loved, or cared for. And if any of these would make the loneliness of survival any less bitter.

But for now, Gai and Tenten meet Lee and Hinata at their home on the Hyuuga estate every 3 July, if there are no missions. Even if Lee and Hinata can't be there, they've given the other two each a key. In a room facing the east, and the rising sun, there is a small shrine. They pour a drink for the one who is gone, and talk about their friend, and comrade, and student, and lover. Sometimes laughter drifts through the house from that room. Sometimes the subdued crying of shinobi who are taught not to grieve shivers down the walls.

In several years, they know, there may be no one to remember Hyuuga Neji. Eventually there will be no one to remember them. Lee has never considered himself particularly religious, but he hopes deeply that here is something beyond, because he keeps thinking back and realising he never said goodbye. Hinata holds him some nights and knows that the painting hanging in the bedroom was Neji's goodbye.

* * *

**Author's Notes:** This fic was inspired by the two songs "Life Support" and "Will I" from the Rent soundtrack. You don't _need_ to be familiar with them to read this, as it is not a songfic. But listening to them (and possibly "Without You") while reading would probably give a tad more depth to the story.

The title is reference to George Harrison's "All Things Must Pass".

The ninja Kwannon (not to be confused with the bodhisattva of the same name) is from Marvel's X-men.

Also, while Neji will come up behind you and smack you with the Inspiration Shillelagh (because a bat just wouldn't cut it), I found out that Hinata is bloody sneaky. This started out that it would be purely a Lee x Neji fic. Hinata kinda wormed her way in there and refused to leave. So it kinda morphed from Shonen-ai to just…. Ai…. Or something. My roommate calls it the Elf Quest solution (and if you aren't familiar with that series, you should be. You really, really should be.)


End file.
